


holding your own

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Nagamas 2017, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: In the heat of the moment, it had been the right decision—Giffca knew that. It was, after all, his job. He was Caineghis’ guardian, right-hand, shield and sword, the Lion King’s ever-present shadow. To be injured for his king was but part and parcel with the oaths of friendship and loyalty he had taken when they were still youths. To be struck down? He did not mind overly much.





	holding your own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhavenh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhavenh/gifts).



> happy nagamas, hhavenh! you asked for caineghis and giffca, and i tried to get both an injury and recovery AND some kind of fancy state affair going. this ended up not reading like i expected it to and being something else entirely but, well....i guess it works out? 
> 
> anyway, i hope you had a lovely holiday season and good new year!

In the heat of the moment, it had been the right decision—Giffca knew that. It was, after all, his job. He was Caineghis’ guardian, right-hand, shield and sword, the Lion King’s ever-present shadow. To be injured for his king was but part and parcel with the oaths of friendship and loyalty he had taken when they were still youths. To be struck down? He did not mind overly much.

“It’s but hardly a scratch,” Giffca told Caineghis once he was allowed to speak to the King, the other man pacing, his mane frazzled and on-end, his mouth a scowl. “Better I take it than you.”

Caineghis’ eyes, furious and bright, had narrowed. He glared. Giffca had smiled, mostly uncaring, happy to put up with time left on bed rest if it meant that Caineghis would be curled at his side in their shared tent, a growl low in his chest, nudging Giffca’s hand off and on between the hours of rest to ask if he was well yet. So much like Skrimir, even in old age, swinging wildly between the trappings of decorum and his own hotheaded nature.

On his fifth night of such bedrest, waiting for his ribs to knit and his concussion to fade, Giffca awoke in the wee hours of the morn to Caineghis rolling away from his side, a loss of heat that genuinely smarted in the chill of the winter months, and it took him a moment to find his legs, wavering as he stood on his own for the first since his injury. “Majesty?” Giffca called, following after him, into the wider portion of the tent—the audience hall.

Skirmir stood when he saw Giffca. “Uncle!” The young lion practically tackled him around the chest, and Giffca grunted, slapping him on the back.

“A little lighter there, my boy. Still smarts.” Skirmir pulled back, his face clouded, genuinely worried. “Broken ribs and a concussion; nothing dramatic. I’m just not as young as I used to be.” A young warrior, healed from such injuries, would be on their feet and roaring in moments. Giffca, now well on the elder side of his years, was not so lucky. Time, unfortunately, was what was required to heal his wounds for troth.

“So it is true, then. You were struck down?” Giffca laughed at Skirmir. Still so young! The horror and agony in his eyes bespoke his own unworldliness. “But, Uncle! You’ve not been defeated in single combat since—“

“It wasn’t single combat,” Giffca pointed out. “And I took the strike for the King, not myself. But, come—what urgent news did you have to wake Caineghis so early in the morn?”

“A summons,” the King said in answer to his question, reading from a slip of parchment. “From Dheginsea. He has asked us to Goldoa, and to bring young Skrimir along as well.” The first wan winter dawn sunlight was cracking the furs of the tent, and it warmed the side of Caineghis’ face, softened the lines beside his eyes. “To welcome the birth of his new child, it seems.”

Giffca raised his eyebrows. Truthfully, he had begun to fear that Dheginsea’s youngest might not be carried to term. Dheginsea and his wife were not young by the standards of Dragons—as long-lived again to the Lions as the Lions were to the Beorc, it was still not a youthful pregnancy. But he had been proven wrong. “Full glad am I to hear,” he murmured, leaning on Skrimir, since he had no other easily accessible support and his balance had begun to falter. “When?”

“Three weeks hence, for the fiftieth day and the naming. Summon a messenger,” Caineghis said, stepping out of the flap of his tent. “Fast, please. To Goldoa.”

 

 

Three weeks was enough to heal Giffca’s broken ribs to perfection, but his balance was still slightly untrustworthy and his appetite hesitant. He _loathed_ concussions—the original injury would heal, but the symptoms would fester for months, becoming intolerable by degrees. So it was that they left for Goldoa.

Goldoa’s harsh peaks and windswept plains were as different from the forests of home in Gallia as they could be, and Giffca, not for the first time, felt truly an outsider there. Rare was it that Dheginsea would open his gates to allow guests, and the first birth of a Dragon in more than three centuries was as good an occasion as any. Their journey was slowed by Giffca’s own injuries, so the Gallian party was the last to arrive. The Bird clans, windswept on currents miles high, had been first. Nobody had expected anything else.

“Dheginsea!” Caineghis greeted the truculent Dragon king with a laugh, clapping the older Laguz on either arm. “Congratulations! A little one, after all this time! I’m sure Almedha and Rajaion are overjoyed!”

“Yes, rather,” Dheginsea agreed, extracting himself from Caineghis’ grip. “We had begun to fear that your entourage would not be in attendance due to your lateness.”

“Forgive me, Majesty.” Giffca bowed stiffly, not dropping his head as low as it should have gone. “It was due to my slowness. I took an injury some weeks hence and it slowed our travel.” Dheginsea sniffed, his broad nose wrinkling. He clearly thought little and less of Giffca’s weakness as an excuse. “Hopefully we have not delayed your celebrations unduly?”

“No. You are more than welcome. It has been some time since I consorted with Soan’s folk. I had forgotten how...fragile, your kind are.” He gestured them into castle Goldoa. “We are glad for your attendance. Please, go, meet young Kurthnaga.” Skrimir copied his uncle’s bow, and they entered the keep, the party within.

Almost every Laguz that Giffca had ever met outside of Gallia was in attendance, bar a few of the Kilvans—relationships were on the outs again, although their young prince, the child Naesala, had come along, accompanying Reyson and Tibarn. The food was delicious, the atmosphere divine, and Giffca breathed a sigh of relief in thanks when Lorazieh offered to soothe the ache of his throbbing head and give him rest.

Afterward, the pounding blessedly gone, Giffca left Skrimir with Prince Rajaion, the two young Laguz already making friends in the way of young Laguz—stupidly, with perhaps a mite more violence than was required—and went to go find Caineghis. His King was not in the main party, nor was he with the spilling festivities that had opened up into the entrance hall of the palace for the commoners of Goldoa. He scented his King and followed it to a small balcony.

Giffca’s footsteps were loud in the quiet of the residential quarter of the palace. It was late, moon and starlight lighting up the dark stone of the keep, as his nose led him unerring to Caineghis’ side. Quiet voices let him know when he was approaching, and Giffca slowed his step but for a moment.

“Shadow,” Dheginsea’s deep voice carried to him, “You may approach. We had been expecting you.”

Giffca came around the corner and bowed his head, stopped at Caineghis’ side, tucked into his shadow. Where he belonged. He looked out at the balcony to see what the Kings were discussing, and immediately felt his expression fall.

Lehran was there, his ragged, ruined black wings hanging unbound, trailing dead feathers in their wake. He was sat at the edge of a fountain, holding what could only be baby Kurthnaga. He was humming, too quietly to be heard, his clear voice broken and cracking. “Oh,” Giffca said softly. Dheginsea nodded.

“He has found some measure of happiness, for which I am thankful. But this...” Dheginsea gestured to the tableaux, “Is merely a stopgap. He must deal with his grief in some way that dare not injure my children. I cannot risk him damaging Kurthnaga. Rajaion and Almedha already guard their shadows against him; another generation cannot do the same as well.”

Giffca did not need to say aloud what it was Dheginsea expected. He glanced to Caineghis, and the tightness beside his King’s eyes said as much. It was not surprising that Dheginsea might want to send the Sage away elsewhere, but he for one did not want that burden. Could they do anything that Dheginsea had not already done? “How many recently?” Caineghis asked, an almost shocking lack of emotion in his voice as he obliquely asked when the last the man had died was.

“Three, but none since Kurthnaga was born. For a time, I believe, he may find some sort of peace, however fleeting.” Dheginsea sniffed. “Think on it. I will not force upon you a burden that is by rights mine alone to bear.”

Caineghis bowed. “I will consider the offer.”

Dismissed without such words, Giffca and Caineghis walked side by side back to the main party, music and laughter and light bursting into vibrant chaos upon their return. It felt muted, knowing that the celebrations did not reach the spires of the towers. They stood for a time, and Giffca set his hand against Caineghis’ shoulder, felt the wide breadth of his muscle, the low and reassuring beat of his heart. Neither of them spoke, and then, Caineghis turned toward him, his eyes sparkling, and took Giffca’s hand in his. How could they mourn when the world arround them swelled with beauty and joy?

“Enough dwelling on what might be,” he said. “Will you dance with me? You’re walking straight again.”

“Lorazieh healed the worst of it,” Giffca admitted, hiding his smile as he took Caineghis’ hand tighter, their broad fingers curled together. He leaned nearer, twined their tails together, and rubbed their cheeks together, scenting his King’s skin. “I am at your service without any reservation.”

“Then dance with me,” Caineghis repeated. “And let us celebrate, and think naught of responsibility.”

 

 

They went to bed nearer to sunrise than sunset, when the sky was already stained gold and orange, curled into a pile, Skrimir’s snores loud in the other room. Woken at dawn by the changing of the Goldoan guard, Giffca stretched out one foot and mashed his claws into Caineghis’ whiskers, kicking him gently until the King growled and rolled over, sitting his rump directly on top of Giffca’s face, bit the side of his knee and then gnawed on it. Not hard enough to hurt. “What,” Caineghis tiredly growled, Giffca rolling until he managed to wiggle out of the King, turning over and bumping their foreheads together, draping himself sideways over Caineghis.

He couldn’t help but think of Lehran, the Sage’s shattered mind and health, his constant longing for something that could never be. What would it have done to either one of them, to lose the other? He feared it, had for years. But they had survived another brush with death, as whole as could be asked.

Giffca closed his eyes, and reveled in the warmth of Caineghis’ body next to his, his clear thoughts, all the years they’d had already and all the years more they would yet share. He listened to their nephew’s snoring, and grinned, butting his nose into the underside of Caineghis’ jaw, just in the snarls of his mane.

“I love you,” he murmured, and settled it at that.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus


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